Grilled Salmon Recipes: Make the Most of Summertime!

Now that we’ve talked about roasting, let’s look at a similar cooking technique – grilling. Like roasting, grilling uses dry heat, but it uses direct rather than indirect heating. And these grilled salmon recipes will get you starting to cook today!

Grilling is the oldest form of cooking, and unlike most other cooking activities, it seems to be the one type that guys love to do. And why not? There’s something about grilling that really brings out your inner caveman.

With lots of protein, omega-3 fats, and a low mercury content, salmon should be a mainstay in most people’s diets. Let’s look at some grilled salmon recipes you’re gonna love.

The Preparation

Charcoal grills are the ideal, but use gas if you must. (Gas grills are essentially broilers. LMVM is all about the thrift, so if I’m gonna broil I’ll just use the oven.) Pile the coal (and wood chips, if you have ‘em) in the middle of the grill, douse with lighter fluid, and start it blazing. Once you know the coals are going, throw the lid on and let them burn down until they are covered with ash but still red hot underneath.

The Ingredients

• Salmon fillets or steak
• Salt and pepper

The Recipe

1. Rinse and pat dry the fish.
2. Sprinkle salt and pepper all over salmon.
3. Put the salmon on the grill skin side down. Grill 3 – 5 minutes.
4. Flip the salmon skin side up. Grill an additional 3 – 5 minutes. Grilled meat should have a nice char on the outside while remaining tender inside.

The Variations

• To help keep the fish from drying out, rub some butter, olive oil, or coconut oil into it before adding salt and pepper.
• Add some dill to the salmon along with the salt and pepper.
• Serve with lemon wedges.
• Marinade in a mixture of any or all of these additions, adding some white wine if you like.

The 2nd Law of LMVM Cooking: Master the Basics

One bad thing about most recipes is that they seem to exist on their own without any context. As a result, every time you want to make a recipe, you need to figure it all out from scratch.

I think a lot of guys get intimidated by the perceived complexity of cooking and, as a result, don’t bother to start. In order to get to the point where you can cook healthy meals, you don’t need to memorize a bunch of complex recipes with many ingredients and new techniques, you need first simply to master the basics.

Earlier I showed you how to roast a chicken, and this basic pattern can be used to roast almost anything, from vegetables to beef. Here, I showed you how to grill, a closely related method to roasting. I showed you a basic recipe and gave a few simple variations so you can make many grilled salmon recipes. This recipe too, can be quickly adapted to grill almost anything. You would grill a steak the same way. You would grill burgers, brats, and veggies the same way, but with a little longer time.

I think for beginners, the “master recipes” to learn are roasting, grilling, steaming, sautéing, and boiling. With these five skills, you will go far, young Jedi.

Tagged as: grilling, laws of cooking, salmon, seafood